For Main St. merchants, a bad time for Patchogue Village power outage

A hit-and-run accident in which a commercial truck crashed into three utility poles in downtown Patchogue Monday, caused a power outage that forced some village stores to shut their doors.

John Murray, owner of a Kilwins chocolate, fudge and ice cream shop and the Hero Joint sandwich shop said both businesses remained without power for 12 hours Monday. 

“I know oftentimes people are not happy with the utilities but in this particular case seems like they did a tremendous job to get it restored considering the amount of damage done,” he said.

Still he estimates that he lost about $4,000 in products due to the outage, money he said he hopes to recoup via insurance claims.

“But I don’t see us opening the Hero Joint today, because we have to prepare new things, replace things that have gone bad and make new soups,” he said Tuesday. 

James Diele-Stein, the owner of Patch Print Ship and More Inc., said power was restored Monday in the late afternoon but he did not have internet or phone service which he relies on to conduct business, so he was closed all day Monday. He reopened early Tuesday afternoon. 

“On a good Monday I make anywhere from $800 to $1000,” he said “I was turning away people who normally ship through us, FedEx and the post office; any shipping or printing that needs to be done can’t be done without internet service.”

But he was looking on the bright side.

“It’s unfortunate that we were all out of business for a while but you know what we all have our health," he said. 

Suffolk police Fifth Precinct crime section officers are looking into the crash, in which the truck driver left the scene. Initially, it left 200 customers without power, most on East Main Street and South Ocean Avenue. Most were restored within two hours while about 20 were out for longer.

Power was fully restored by 1 a.m. Tuesday after crews worked into the night to replace the three damaged poles, Jeremy Walsh, a spokesman for PSEG, said.

“With the new poles set and electricity restored other utilities are now working on transferring their equipment to the new poles,” Walsh said.

Alexa Bonadonna, an Optimum spokeswoman said in an email that service was restored early Tuesday.

“Per protocol, our crews had to wait until PSEG installed a new pole and cleared the area before we were able to address the damage to our lines,” the email said.

Walsh said the accident happened after a truck driving near Terry Street caught on some “lower hanging cable or telephone wires” and took down three utility poles.